The science of marketing is discovering consumer preferences. Many marketing psychologists prefer to think they control consumer concepts, but in practice, the marketing industry hasn’t been able to even find Generation Y for years.
PC World is running a piece by Computerworld’s Mike Elgan on the subject of successful designs for electronic products.
With all due respect to the marketing geniuses of the last 50 years, (in other words none at all), this is a subject which needs more scrutiny on consumer realities and less fascination with the brilliance of marketing and design concepts.
I’m not going to run down Elgan for expressing his own opinions, but I don’t agree with a word about how the electronic goods market handles consumers.
My old man was an industrial designer, among other things. I grew up in an advertising and marketing environment.
If I’ve ever suspended my disbelief it was for a nano second, or less.
Consumers, particularly in electronics, are getting multiple forms of the short end of the stick. They have little or no input into design, or even design concepts.
PC World:
The problem is that there are too many technologists in technology. The technology is only half the equation. The other half is the human, that irrational, impulsive, impatient, power-hungry gratification machine.
When you ask someone what they really want, they won't tell you the truth because they're not aware of the truth.
According to Elgan, what’s really wanted is control.
He means functional control, not the general marketing approach that all consumers are lost in some psychological haze of animal impulses. As Elgan points out, design is working on protecting consumers from mistakes as if they’re morons. He says, rightly, “undo” is the best defence.
What undermines this position is that the control factor is qualified by what’s being controlled. Computer software tends to be very Rube Goldberg-like, incredible complexity for results.
There’s a level of absurdity in that. Nobody give the beginnings of a damn about the complexity. The idea is “click and go there”.
Meanwhile, what about choice? What about the power hungry desire to send an email or make a phone call without being in the running for an Academy Award or simultaneous Nobel Prize in Physics and Computer Science?
I’d suggest consumers are more interested in control as a reasonable expectation after buying an expensive system. Complexity can go and do whatever doesn’t get in the way of that.
The commercial fact is that people have only so many choices. They also pay for whole systems. The complexity costs a lot of money. Nobody asks for the esoteric widgets which get gushy reviews in the industry, make millions out of consumers, and are never used.
Who asked for a million and one media players? Who asked for proprietary overkill? Who wanted huge amounts of semi-functional software packages? Was there an election to determine how many of your phone calls drop out?
When you buy a phone, you get a phone. When you buy a thousand dollar computer, you get what anyone can be bothered putting into an operating system. That can be, as we’ve been seeing with insulting regularity, bloody nearly anything, whether you like it, want it, or not.
You don’t get a definite thing. Elgan, who’s obviously trying to make a case for consulting users, makes the perfectly valid point that a lot of systems don’t do enough checks on usability and control, but again, usability and control of what?
Anyone would think consumers were being done a favor with the vast amounts of enigmatic crap which has to be explored when you buy a new system. Run problems, system crashes, and data freak outs are all part of a wonderful mix which is now approaching its 20th year.
What’s needed are standards. Like a phone, you get the basics. They’re supposed to be functional, and the basics of the average computer are pretty damn basic.
Thing is, people are paying for this stuff, whether it works, crashes, or starts singing Broadway medleys.
Consumers are being left to foot the bill for things which would be completely unsalable in any other industry. Imagine selling a TV or a fridge that didn’t work properly. You’d be covered by just about every law ever written.
With a computer, however, you don’t even get much of a choice of model, let alone features. That’s rather ironic, given that a computer can have most of its hardware built from scratch, until you get to the bottleneck of the software.
I just don’t buy the market model that the product outweighs the consumer.
The consumer takes on risks with these products, and that’s also a factor. Things which are perceived risks are avoided as much as possible. The electronic product isn’t like its pre-computer ancestors. People are now dependent on their software. Don’t be surprised if the arrogance of electronic design gets its comeuppance in a lot of class actions.
Meanwhile, to hell with complexity. Either it runs and does what it’s bought to do, or you shouldn’t have to pay for it.
There’s another principle of marketing, and it’s literally one of the oldest marketing premises:
Who needs it?
When doing anything, the tendency is to simplify, not make more complicated, the way things are done. Might be an idea if the designers and marketers start looking at the glass like it’s empty, not full. Consumers aren't in raptures about their electronics, they're trying to survive using them.
